Hello, I'm Caroline Jones. Philip Ruddock is arguably Australia's most controversial politician. As Federal Immigration Minister, he's the man ultimately responsible for our hard line on asylum seekers and the detention centres in which they're being held. There's no doubt about the electoral popularity of the current policies, but Philip Ruddock is also accused of being a small 'l' liberal who's sold out. As you'll see, the critics include his own daughter speaking publicly for the first time. Kirsty Ruddock, like her father, is a lawyer and a member of Amnesty International, but on this issue they disagree strongly in their beliefs. Tonight, the dilemmas of Philip Ruddock.

PHILIP RUDDOCK, Minister for Immigration: I find it very hard to talk about myself and always have. I've always allowed other people to make their judgments as to what they want to see in me. People say of me that I have a fairly even temper, and I think that's probably an accurate description. I'm not particularly intense. Some people describe me as being 'grey'. I think even the cartoonists have been able to do that. But if I need to be animated I can be, but I think a lot of the issues I have to deal with require sober and careful reflection and understanding, particularly when you're dealing with people's lives.

I mean, I do feel very deeply about people's entitlement to live in a safe and secure environment, and in many parts of the world that doesn't happen, and I think it's appropriate to place your compassion where it is most needed. And sometimes it's hard and sometimes I will be characterised as being hard, and I know that. I mean, if you've made a tough decision, none of the thought that goes into it, none of the concern you might have for the individuals really is allowed to come through, because it can't be encapsulated in those sorts of news grabs and it's part of what I've got to put up with.

HEATHER RUDDOCK, wife: I think he is, by nature, a very calm person. I think he has an inner calm about him and there's not much that fazes him. It's an extraordinary quality which I believe not many people have. I certainly don't have it.

He does think logically - I think that's probably his legal background - and some people might see that logical thought process as being a person without passion or compassion. But he does feel passionately about subjects and he is also a very compassionate man.

I jokingly describe myself as an 'escaped lawyer'. I've worked for many years now for a major legal publishing company, so that keeps me very busy. I've made it my mission in life to ensure that he doesn't get bigheaded. I think it's really important when you're in public life that you have your feet on the ground and there's somebody there keeping you honest, so I suppose I'm keeping him honest.

PHILIP RUDDOCK: I met Heather at the Second National Young Liberal Convention in Perth some 32 years ago. I was in the lift, the lift stopped, Heather got in, and I looked at her and I said, "You must be Miss South Australia Young Liberal." And she thought, "Who's this bumptious upstart asking me this?" And we got out at the ground floor. I tried to engage her in conversation and walk out with her and she wasn't very interested in that. But by the end of the week we got to know each other better, and I think three months later we were engaged, and by the time the next convention was coming round we were married. Others have said they think it's because she was the only woman who had such a sharp intellect that she was consistently able to put me down.

Chequerboard, ABC 1972

Primarily I think we're here because we believe that we can make things better through our own efforts.

HEATHER RUDDOCK: I think probably among my peers I was always seen as a competitive, fairly articulate, noisy woman, and he didn't see me that way. He saw me as a very interesting person. He was very excited about what I was doing, he was very encouraging about me continuing my career, going into law, going into practice, and I found that really empowering. I was really totally struck by that. And then I got to know him better as a really nice, sensitive, caring person who not only empowered me but ultimately empowered our children.

Chequerboard, ABC 1972

Good evening, ladies and gentlemen. Are you in the market for a new future? If so, why not look at the models here on show at your Liberal Party discount house? The first model here is the upright Snedden, a lovely plan including a fully controlled capital inflow valve, a modest family unit tax, a neatly worked sliding income scale, and all worked by an avaricious commissioner.

PHILIP RUDDOCK: The Young Liberals, in the 1960s and early 1970s, were a very vibrant and a very active group of young people, and it wasn't just the social events - it went to the development of satirical revue. Everyone was dragooned into them.

Chequerboard, ABC 1972

The offers of the Liberal Party are genuine. Sir Frank Packer... oops, Rupert Murdoch wouldn't let me do their commercials if they weren't.

PHILIP RUDDOCK: It was a time in which the Liberal Party had to change, and it was a change generationally from those whose experience was in the war to those who were the first of the baby boomers. I was called, I think, in a 'Bulletin' article "the identikit Liberal" - young, legally trained, fairly bland, but moving into and assuming new positions in the Liberal Party.

Heather was a student at university in her second year of her arts degree when we met, and then we had our children. While she was studying law Kirsty came along and Caitlin was a little while later.

Chequerboard, ABC 1972

We have very important obligations to Kirsty. We have to provide her with a family environment, we have to give her the sorts of responsibilities we'd like to see a child brought up with, and I think that, we see as a prime obligation.

KIRSTY RUDDOCK, daughter: It's very difficult for me to be his daughter because I very much want to be my own person and I have very different views from him as well. It would be fair to say that I'm very opposed to mandatory detention and certainly the detention of children in particular, and I've raised that with him on a number of occasions.

I'm a lawyer and I work for the Australian Government. I've also been very involved in human rights organisations and particularly in Amnesty International, and they are one of the organisations that have been highly critical of his portfolio, with just cause. I also find it hard to reconcile some of the things that he's doing at the moment with some of the things he has taught me to believe. Very much seems to be in some senses he is opposing some of the things he's brought me up to believe in. And so that is quite difficult, to sort of reconcile the public perception of him and also the person that I know as well.

Dad's views, I suppose, are pretty traditional Liberal views rather than conservative views, and so he always encouraged us to have our own point of view and to think for ourselves. And certainly very much being involved and interested in human rights issues, and being generally fairly compassionate to people in society are things that I've certainly learnt from him. And he was very involved in issues relating to the equality of all people.

I think Mum and Dad have a very strong relationship. Dad very much respects Mum as very much an intellectual equal and bounces ideas off her, and I think that's very much because it IS a lonely life and there isn't really anyone else that he can trust in that way. I mean, like, any politician he's been subject, over his career, to a lot of political manoeuvring. When I was a teenager, very much a push in the Liberal Party to get rid of some of the more moderate people. A lot of his friends were moved out of the Liberal Party at that stage.

HEATHER RUDDOCK: I'm often troubled by the public perception of him. I find it quite hurtful when you might walk through a demonstration to go to a function and you've got people shouting out, "You're a mass murderer, you're a racist," blah, blah, blah. One thing he does not have is a racist bone in his body. Many faults he may have, but he is not a racist man. On the other hand, there are a lot of people who are supporting him in what he's doing who I feel sometimes may be supporting him for what I might see as the wrong reasons.

PHILIP RUDDOCK: From very early in my community that I've lived in, people of tremendously diverse backgrounds have been involved with us. We had the Marcias, who had a market garden around the corner. We had a Lebanese family just up the street. We had a Dutch family. Around another corner there was a Chinese family. And we used to meet with them socially. And for me it's been very natural, as an Australian, to identify with the roots of people from so many diverse backgrounds.

There are clearly times when we're under pressure because people do come with differences, but if you look around the world at where there are those sorts of differences and difficulties, ours is not a microcosm of it. We have been able to manage it with far greater diversity, better than anybody else, and I'm very proud of what we've been able to do as Australians.

Chequerboard, ABC 1972

Reporter: Philip Ruddock, 29, is following in the footsteps of his father. Both are men devoted to the ideal of service to the community.

PHILIP RUDDOCK: Dad went into Parliament in 1962 and he was a great role model. He was a highly ethical person. He had a strong commitment to Liberal philosophy.

Chequerboard, ABC 1972

Reporter: What was he like at school?

Max Ruddock: He was an improver. He was better in second year than he was in first year. When he finished high school he was a darn sight better than when he started, and when he went to university he improved from year to year as he went along. I would say he was a boy who started off being fairly average and ended up being a lot better than average.

PHILIP RUDDOCK: My parents weren't particularly comfortable. They had to struggle in order to be able to give me the opportunities that they did. I was enrolled in the local Sunday school - Anglican. I later became a Sunday school teacher. But at an appropriate time, when there were the crusades of Billy Graham, I certainly made a commitment at that time, a commitment that I've never walked away from. I'm not a preacher. I don't try to impose on others, but I hope, in the life I lead, people will see in me an example, and I am conscious of that.

I suppose the most difficult time for me in politics was when I determined to cross the floor on an issue of principle.

ABC News, August 25, 1988

Reporter: The resolution bars any future government using race as its immigration criteria. Three Opposition MPs crossed the floor...

PHILIP RUDDOCK: I made my position very clear. I did so in the party room. But if I was asked to vote on any proposition that the Liberal Party would sanction a discriminatory migration program, I would denounce it, I would vote against it.

ABC News, August 26, 1988

Reporter: The Liberal rebels are standing firm in the wake of their revolt, despite talk in party circles today that they could be disciplined.

Philip Ruddock: The issue of race in relation to migrant selection is a matter of conscience. I see it as being far more fundamental than issues of bricks and mortar.

John Howard: They embarrassed their colleagues by doing it. The important thing is that we have an immigration policy that is right.

HEATHER RUDDOCK: It was a very courageous thing for him to do because it was just at a time preceding preselections, and he really was putting his career on the line. But he felt very strongly about that issue.

PHILIP RUDDOCK: Look, I mean, some people from time to time suggest that I've substantially compromised myself to remain in the government. I think people fail to recognise that John Howard has always had a team of people around him who have come from a wide spectrum of views. I mean, he says it himself.

HEATHER RUDDOCK: A lot of people ran this line that he's changed since he became the Minister for Immigration, but he just has a different job, and it's a tough job and he has to make difficult decisions.

PHILIP RUDDOCK: Border control and immigration controls are really questions of degree. You'd have to be very naive to believe that millions of people are not interested in coming to Australia.

There are finite numbers that any country can accommodate. Kirsty, for instance, would like to see a larger refugee program, and I understand that. Many would like to see a larger refugee program, but at the end of the day you need money to pay for it. I notice that my political opponents said before the last election that a program of about 12,000 people was right.

Lobbying in relation to immigration issues is evidenced by the fact that I get something like 40,000 letters a year, and of course many people will hand me letters at functions. Tonight is a community event for Afghans. Australia has resettled something of the order of 5,000 Afghans in recent years, and they're people who came essentially through the front door.

BASHIR AHMED KESHTIAR, community spokesperson: In general they are very satisfied, the way that the Minister is handling the whole issues, but we still - you might be aware through the media that we still want some more sympathetic consultation towards the newly arrived Afghans.

KIRSTY RUDDOCK: I suppose what upsets me is that he can't take a more compassionate approach to some of the issues. I understand that there's difficult economics behind some of the issues, that obviously they're worried about some of the implications of sort of opening the floodgates and things like that, but that doesn't give you an excuse to not treat people with compassion and as human beings.

PHILIP RUDDOCK: I, I mean, I have compassion for everyone, but I can't help everyone. Compassion is felt according to a hierarchy of need. I mean, if you think about the way in which we deliver medical services in a hospital situation you have an emergency unit and a range of accidents - train crash. What do you do? You bring people in and the attention has to be given to those who are immediately in danger of losing their lives, and then you move on to the others as you can.

Long before I became minister, I'd spent a lot of time in refugee situations. And the difficulty is that most people in Australia who are thinking about these issues only ever see those who have been free enough to travel and who have come to Australia and who want to tell their story. The difficulty is that most people are never having to weigh that up, look in the eyes of those people who have no prospect of engaging a people smuggler, no money to be able to be trafficked. And where I sit, you have to at times see those faces, hear those stories.

I've probably only got four genuine asylum seekers in detention right now, maybe 20 amongst visitor overstayers who are saying they're now asylum seekers. The balance - and we're talking about 550 who have been found not to be refugees - are being held for removal or held while they explore legal appeals. My view is very simple. The vast majority of those people can go home.

Earlier this year I was in Iran. We witnessed the arrangements that are now being put in place between the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees and Iran for the return of Afghans from Iran now to Afghanistan.

Getting people home is as important as being able to resettle what is inevitably going to be a small proportion of those people who are displaced, and unfortunately, when you've got 14 million people who've been accepted as refugees, somebody, in an orderly system, has to make a choice about who is going to be resettled.

KIRSTY RUDDOCK: It's very difficult to argue with him, though, because he does have all the facts there at his fingertips. I think generally he does have a lot of faith in the system there and often forgets that there are real people involved and doesn't hear enough of their stories.

ABC News, April 17, 2000

Reader: Amnesty International has told Immigration Minister Philip Ruddock to remove his Amnesty membership badge during public appearances. Amnesty has criticised Mr Ruddock over Australia's treatment of asylum seekers.

KIRSTY RUDDOCK: I've told him on a number of occasions that I feel that he should not wear his badge when he is making statements that are quite different to the views that Amnesty would take on issues, when he's talking about policies in relation to detention and refugees, he just shouldn't be wearing the badge. And he doesn't listen.

7.30 Report, John Clarke and Bryan Dawe skit, April 4, 2002

Bryan Dawe: Incidentally, Mr Ruddock, what is that thing on your suit there?

John Clarke: That's an Amnesty badge. I'm a member of Amnesty, the human rights organisation and their badge is a little small. People don't notice I always wear it.

Bryan Dawe: Right.

PHILIP RUDDOCK: I don't purport to speak for Amnesty when I'm a minister, and it's the one organisation that I am a member of whose badge I have been proud to wear over a long period of time, and as long as I'm a member I'll continue to wear it.

HEATHER RUDDOCK: I think Philip understands Kirsty's view perfectly well and he respects her right to have that view. We're very pleased that she is a person who thinks about the issues of the world and aspires to be a good citizen. We think that reflects very positively on our parenting, actually. I think his home life is actually, he's probably his most subdued. There's four people with four opinions on everything and we do have robust discussions.

Kirsty's view on children in detention - no-one wants to see women and children in detention. I understand where she's coming from. I also understand where Philip is coming from. And it's very difficult for me, being in the middle, to say, yes, who is right or who is wrong. I can understand both points of view.

KIRSTY RUDDOCK: I don't think he is going to give any kind of amnesty to the current people that are in asylum, but I'd like to see him do it. Obviously, you know, I love my dad, but sometimes you do feel a bit let down that you can't change his view on things and that you're not getting through to him as well, and that somehow it's my fault what he's doing is wrong.

I have decided to live overseas for a period of time as a volunteer with a program called Youth Ambassadors, and very much I'm motivated by wanting to go and live and work in a developing country, but another reason behind leaving, I suppose, is to get away from what I see very much as a daily grind in terms of reading about the politics that my father is involved in on a daily basis, reading about immigration issues constantly and issues surrounding reconciliation - things that I find very difficult.

PHILIP RUDDOCK: I don't expect my family to be parrots. She's a tenacious, competent lawyer. I'm proud of the fact that she does care, and I think everybody knows how proud I am of both my daughters. But I do expect that they would also recognise that I have specific responsibilities for Australia.